Fangoria had a lot of great merch that you could purchase directly through the magazine. We saw the masks/costumes collections yesterday. Now let’s take a look at some of the other awesome items you could buy through the pages of Fangoria.

One of the first places I’d usually go, and the place I usually lingered on after I’d read the magazine, is the two page back issue order form. Checking out previous issues and what movies were covered was amazing. I love that they included many of the covers as well. You can see in the lower right I filled out the order form back in the day. I was optimistically hoping my parents would let me send away for some of the issues. I checked off issues #50 and #55 in the form. Issue 50 was the issue featured in the picture on the right with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). I always lusted after that issue and never got it. The other issue, #55, I’m less sure why I wanted. The cover pic is above the description with the Invaders from Mars remake on the cover and some first looks at Psycho III.

This ad showed up in Fangoria for many years. One of my favorites. I never wanted to own any of these shirts, I just liked the idea that they existed. I would never have been able to wear one of these shirts to school, so what was the point? Plus the shirts were $25 which was A LOT, even then. But the ad was very eye catching and fun. I like the guy in the luchador mask. WTF?!

Fangoria sold everything to make money within its pages. Here are some horror movie soundtracks for sale. Some of these I would imagine are pretty rare now. Some of these might possibly have been made custom. That Troll soundtrack couldn’t have sold too well. The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack is pretty great. But check out that list of eclectic movie soundtracks on the right. Teen Wolf? Warhol’s Dracula? The first Evil Dead? Transylvania 6-5000?! Wow.

The Gore Store was always a great stop in the magazine to see what cool books and props were being offered. This particular Gore Store is from 1987. Some cool film books about Night of the Living Dead and Stephen King. Also this page was a chance to order the annual Bloody Best of Fangoria issues. In this one you could order all the current 5 volumes of Bloody Best right there for $18 plus shipping. A little over $3 each. Not bad.

I’ve said before I’m a huge Fangoria fan. I still have all my old issues.

Here are some awesome mask ads from Fangoria magazine. Let’s put them in chronological order shall we?

First up:

A Monster Madness makeup kit ad from 1979 featuring several different types of masks. Three space alien designs, but check out C, on the far right. Does it look familiar? Maybe a bit like Darth Vader without the samurai helmet? The ad says the kits were designed by Dick Smith, but his name isn’t anywhere in the branding.

Ad for Don Post masks circa 1980. With the gear up to Empire Strikes Back that year, it’s not surprising that there are several Star Wars masks in this collection. Including a Bith cantina band member.

Massacre Masks ad from 1987. A fun ad showcasing not only masks but gaping wounds. It was always preferrable at the time to want to buy the goriest thing you could find in these ads and then wear them around your parents or other family members.

Nightmares masks ad from 1987. More gory, disgusting mask designs. Even back in the day I really liked the Letcher mask/hands in the upper left. I’m also in love with that “The Coffin” prop in the lower left. And the full size “The Corpse”? Yes, please. In 1987, those two items would set you back $875 plus shipping.

In the late 80s-early 90s I was a big horror fan. I watched all the slasher movies and I bought and read Fangoria magazine every month. For a while, it was my favorite magazine. I even still have a bunch of my original issues.

Surprisingly, Fangoria didn’t have a LOT of ads, but every issue there was at least 1 big ad for some movie that was either about to come out in theaters, or getting ready to hit VHS and Laserdisc. They are glorious full page color ads. And I loved them. Here are a few of those ads I still have. You can click the images to see them BIGGER on Flickr.

Since my theme this year is zombies, I’ll start with a zombie movie. This ad is for Zombie Nightmare from 1987. It stars Adam West (yes, THAT Adam West) and Tia Carrere. A youth is killed by a group of rampant teenagers. A voodoo priestess resurrects the youth to enact revenge on his killers so he can rest in peace.

Here’s another 1987 ad for the first sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The bottom of the ad includes mail away offers for 3D posters, 6 ft cardboard standees and t-shirts. I love that they “suggest” you use a chainsaw to cut out the order form.

And here to finish off the 1987 hat trick is an ad for David Cronenberg’s The Fly. I love this image. I don’t think they needed the image of the Brundlefly in the upper left, I wish they would have left that out.

Having recently revisited Return of the Living Dead I wanted to watch something similar in tone and execution.Sort of a hard rock zombie horror movie. Searching hard, REALLY hard, I thought I’d found exactly the movie I was looking for. It’s called Hard Rock Zombies. The tag line says it all, “THEY CAME FROM THE GRAVE TO ROCK N’ RAVE AND MISBEHAVE!” I don’t know how familiar all of you are with this movie, but I was only aware of the poster (above). Which is pretty awesome. I’d never seen the movie nor had I really ever given much thought to actually watching the movie. So, thanks to AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, I have finally had a chance to watch it. Let’s start with my expectations.

This came out the same year, 1985, as Return of the Living Dead. The very next month, actually. Which surprises me because I totally thought this movie was a direct reaction to the underground popularity of ROTLD. However, to come out the next month I would assume it would have been mostly filmed by the time that came out. Which is interesting. Anyway, that’s where my expectations were. Something along the lines of a Return of the Living Dead. A funny, hard rock horror movie that may make little sense but has lots of fun with not only the genre but itself. Did I get it? Let’s find out.

Well, the first scene in the movie is sort of bonkers. Two guys on a leisurely drive pick up a hot chick on the side of the road. This chick is Elsa.

The group stop off at a lake and go skinny dipping. Elsa drowns and slashes both of the guys while another weird guy and two dwarves watch and take pictures. Both bodies are carried out of the water and put in clear plastic wrapping and then Elsa cuts off one of the guys’ hands and immediately holds it lovingly up to her cheek while singing, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles.

There are a lot of zombie novels out there. I can’t read and review them all, nor would I really want to. However, there are a few I read that I’ll quickly review for you in an opportunity to get them out there so you have other zombie books to read now that AWESOME-tober-fest 2013 has got you hot for zombies again.

Let’s begin with the novelization of the original Romero classic, Night of the Living Dead.

George Romero’s 1966 film, Night of the Living Dead, is a classic in the horror genre. While attending college in Pittsburgh in the 60s, George Romero and John Russo developed a horror script. They pitched it to a film company, received funding and created one of the most important genre-defining pictures of all time. This book is the novelization of that script. Surprisingly, the book wasn’t released until 1974, a clear six years after the release of the movie. Which means that it wasn’t based on an original draft of the script, it was just a page one copy of the movie. I didn’t realize that before I started reading. So, if you’ve seen the movie, you’ve essentially read the book. Except, the movie is actually better. The book is slow and a LOT less interesting than the movie. I don’t know if it’s the way Russo writes or what, but I had a hard time staying awake while reading plus there’s not really any new story information you get for reading. You may as well just watch the movie again.

In 1978, after Russo and Romero went their separate ways, Russo decided to write a sequel to Night of the Living Dead. He called it Return of the Living Dead. This book has nothing to do with the 1985 horror comedy of the same name other than it inspired that movie. Russo wanted this book to be the movie and wrote it as a screenplay, but Dan O’Bannon disliked Russo’s story and did a page 1 rewrite. This book was Russo’s attempt to continue the story they began in Night of the Living Dead. It’s boring, uninspired and will immediately put you into a reading coma before you finish the first page. It’s not even worth reading as a novelty. As a matter of fact, just skip both of these books. Watch the original 1966 Night of the Living Dead movie and the 1985 Return of the Living Dead movie. They are much more enjoyable and you’ll get more out of it.

So, in honor of my Halloween zombie theme this year, here are some comic covers that specifically homage famous zombie movies of the past.

Marvel’s third Zombies mini-series (I covered the Marvel Zombies comic franchise earlier this month) featured covers that mimic old zombie posters. Let’s take a look at those four covers.

Marvel Zombies 3 #1 (right) homages the famous Army of Darkness poster (left). Front and center on the comic is Machine Man who figures prominently into the story.

The cover to Marvel Zombies 3 #2 mimics the poster for 28 Days Later.

Marvel Zombies 3 #3 looks exactly like the original Evil Dead poster.

Marvel Zombies 3 #4 mimics the great Shaun of the Dead poster.

Another Marvel series that homaged famous movie posters was Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth. It homaged a lot of famous posters like Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, The Graduate, Scarface and even Pretty Woman. See them here on Comic Vine. Only issue #3 homages a zombie movie.